Current Affairs Quiz - February, 2020

Notes:
After nearly four years of the referendum voted by the British people for Brexit, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union, at 11.00 p.m on January 31, 2020.
After Britain left the bloc, the European Union has 27 more countries. The process by which the member state leaves the Union has expired and UK has entered the transition period, which will remain till December 31, 2020. The UK will continue to obey the EU laws and courts during the transition period. A new 50-pence coin was launched recently to mark the occasion.

Notes:
Veteran diplomat Ajay Bisaria was recently appointed as the next Indian High Commissioner to the North American country, Canada. Ajay Bisaria, who is to assume office shortly, is a 1987-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer.
Prior to this assignment, Bisaria was serving as India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan. After the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was withdrawn and the state was re-organised, he was returned to India from Pakistan. He is known for taking several initiatives between Indian and Pakistan including the Kartarpur corridor.

Notes:
In the Union Budget 2020-21, the Government has set its disinvestment target at ₹ 1.2 Lakh Crores for the fiscal year 2020-21. The government also expects ₹90,000 crore revenue from disinvestment of government stake in public sector banks and financial institutions, including the LIC and IDBI bank. This is in addition to the 1.2 Lakh Crore target and hence a total of ₹ 2.1 Lakh Crores worth disinvestment is scheduled.
This year, the government has missed the disinvestment target of ₹1.05 lakh crore. So far, ₹18,000 crore has been generated via disinvestment. The revised estimates set ₹65,000 crore as disinvestment target for this fiscal.

Notes:
A new scheme was proposed in the budget, which is to be implemented by the Aviation Ministry, for transporting agricultural products of farmers. The scheme was named as ‘Krishi Udan Scheme’.
The scheme is to be launched by the ministry on both international and national routes, which will improve the value realisation on the agricultural products of the farmers. The scheme will assist the farmers with more focus on north-east and tribal districts. The UDAN scheme was launched in 2016, to boost regional connectivity at affordable air-fares. The airlines are provided concessions from the centre, state and airport operators.

Notes:
India and Maldives signed 5 agreements for establishing ‘Addu Tourism zone’ in five islands of Addu atoll. An atoll is a ring-shaped chain of islands formed of coral.
The Tourism zone is expected to be set up at a cost of $2.49 million. It aims at generating local employment and boost the eco-tourism opportunities in Addu. The High Commissioner of India Sunjay Sudhir signed the MoUs with the Maldives Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdulla Shahid and Addu City Council. Another MoU to establish a bottled water plant in Hoarafushi was also inked.

Notes:
The 26-year-old Indian Table Tennis player, Harmeet Desai was seen in news as he clinched his maiden title in the National Table Tennis championship held recently.
In the hard-fought finals, he defeated another top-rated player Manav Thakkar and won the men’s singles title. Manav Thakkar has earlier defeated the top seeded player G. Sathiyan in the semi-finals. Harmeet Desai, an Arjuna awardee, had also won the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championship title in 2019. Sutirtha Mukherjee won the women’s singles title, for the second time in a row.

Notes:
Famous Punjabi writer Jaswant Singh Kanwal recently passed away at his native village recently. His novels are loved by several readers across the country.
The novelist was a recipient of the country’s highest literary honor, Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977 for his famous novel ‘Taushali Di Hanso’. He has authored more than 100 novels, which mainly focus on agrarian crisis, caste barrier and women empowerment. He was also called as the ‘Writer of movements’.

Notes:
Fitch Ratings recently released its forecast for India’s economic growth for the next financial year. It estimated a growth rate of 5.6 per cent, which is lower than the 6-6.5 per cent growth rate, as projected by the Indian government in its recent Economic survey 2019-20.
The agency also stated that the Union budget recently presented did not alter its view towards the growth prospects of the country. The agency has affirmed the ‘BBB- rating’ to India, last December. The government has missed its fiscal deficit targets for the previous year and the target for the next year is furthermore relaxed to 3.8%.

Notes:
Authorities from the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research have recently signed agreements with India in the fields of higher education and research, in New Delhi.
This agreement is a part of the visit of delegation of important educational institutions of Norway to India. Among the several agreements signed, the significant pact was between the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), for co-operation in the fields of bio-photonics, health and diagnostic tools, nanotechnology.

Notes:
Indian Oil and Gas company, the Indian Oil Corporation recently signed an MoU with Russian energy firm, Rosneft for importing Crude Oil from Russia.
The crude oil purchase agreement was signed during a meeting between Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and the Chairman and CEO of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. Under the agreement, Russia would export 2 million tonnes of crude oil to India this year. Rosneft bought Essar Oil in 2017, which is now Nayara Energy and holds 49 per cent stake in the firm.